Jerry Lee & Myra Brown Lewis
Date & Place:
in Louisiana United States
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Jerry Lee & Myra Brown Lewis
Updated Mar 10, 2025
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Gary Gray
4 followers 65 favorites
03/29/2014
Comments
AncientFaces
380k+ followers 411 favorites
05/15/2014
Great balls of fire - it's Jerry Lee Lewis & his 3rd wife Myra Gale Brown. Jerry is considered an early pioneer & wild-man of rock and roll during the 1950s.
Gary Gray
4 followers 65 favorites
04/02/2014
Photo Courtesy of Schelley Brown Francis. Thank you cuz!! :)
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At the time of the scandal he insisted that she was 15 :/
Kathy Pinna
218 followers 32.7k+ favorites
04/10/2014
Or, a common Southern man . . . lots of men wed young girls.
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They did back in civil war times but this to me is gross.
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My grand parents from Mississippi, wed when they were 14 & 16. They had 4children and were together for over 60 years, until death.
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My genealogy is full of some disparate ages when it comes to marriage. One of my branches (long, long, long ago) even has a step-father who impregnated his step-daughter due to the extreme lack of men in that area at the time (they had to repopulate the island). I myself dated a 21 year old when I was 14 which never hurt me in any way and we were still friends when he died of cancer decades later. The point is we need to take into consideration "mental age" and the era we are talking about and not make arbitrary judgements, especially when you consider what the average life span was even just 100 years ago (there was only so much time to accomplish everything). Most western teenagers are A LOT older mentally than say a poor uneducated 13 year old from the middle east forced to marry a 50 year old she's never even met because of some warped sense of family honor and religion. That truly is gross.
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Pretty sad, Ingrid Clarke Jones, that you think this is common to Southerners. That's not the only place this type of May-September dating/marriage happened and still happens today.
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Ingrid, you sound like a bigot, short of racist, with your elitist way of thinking. Very ugly words in your comment.
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He was 22 and she was his 13 y/o cousin. Child molester.
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@Cathy Mize Manning: 14 and 16 is WAY different...Heck, my first husband and I met when I was 16 and he was 20...but Jerry Lee Lewis was a pedophile! PLUS this was his cousin! EW!!! :p
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All of y'all bagging on Southern men/women? Take it from me, as Southern as one can get, it's ALL over - N, S., E., W., etc. You have all bought into the movie mentality.
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I remember Loretta Lynn was 13 when she married her husband. He was in his mid 20's.
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I saw her show and it was a very rough life with him. Sad.
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It's ridiculous to call him a paedophile. It's been fairly common and legal to marry at very young ages at numerous times and places throughout recent history. Today, in the US, many see this as shocking. But he was a product of the time and place he was raised.
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Anyone ever seen My Fair Lady? .. one of the most famous, classic musicals of all time .. and noticed the MASSIVE age different between the two lead characters? Eliza was probably supposed to be about 17, and Professor Higgins, around 65. But not at all unusual.
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Age if consent varies from state to state. The cousin thing --- hhhhhmmmmm.
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She was a 3rd or 4th cousin. My granny was 14 when she married and a widow with 2 children by age 18.....of course, that was back in the 1920s and early 1930s. Times were much different then, especially in extremely rural locations.
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She was a first cousin, once removed. NOT a distant cousin.
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first cousin once removed...second cousin, not the same. She was the child of Jerry's first cousin. They'd be second cousins only if one of each of their parents were first cousins. There has to be a way to describe the relationship between individuals and their cousins' children. If first cousins each have children, then those children are second cousins to each other, right down through the generations. (Needed to have this explained to me!)
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She was NOT his first cousin. They were 'Second Cousins'. To be clear, Myra was the daughter of his bass player, who was his cousin.
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Either way, love is love. It's not like they were brother and sister. Heck, I've heard of cases where brother and sister married accidentally, not realizing they were even related at all. That's icky, but cousins .. even first cousins ... who are we to judge whether two people who love each other should be together.
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As for being cousins, it depends most states won't allow 1st or 2nd cousins to marry however 3rd cousins may marry. My uncle & his wife are also cousins. His grandpa & her grandma were brother & sister. However, my uncle was adopted so they aren't blood related. It was funny to see that her surname didn't change, because it's the same.
Colleen Watts
via Facebook
Check out the ESSO gas sign in the background.....now exxon. cool
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Look at your genealogy records. It used to be common for girls to marry at about that age. I'm not saying it's good, but it used to be an accepted thing. My husband's mother married when she was 14 & was very happy.
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When your life span was 30 or 40 years, people got married very young. This guy didn't marry a 13 year old in the 1700s. He's a pig. Period.
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Years ago men married very young girls. It seems disgusting to me but in working on my geneology, I have found this happens.
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I also worked on my family tree too and found first cousin marrying on both sides of my family, Think about it, over hundred years or more people were limited to travel and living in small towns not like today we meet people around the world. So if your Dating a relative now is pretty sicken..
via Facebook
Also the chance of so many mental and physical problems from too close a family member...My x had an aunt who married her first cousin and they had to sign something saying they would not re produce due to the possibility of too close a genetically match..or maybe genetically unmatch...many problems from too close DNA...
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Marrying cousins wasn't unusual until recently. If not the first the other cousins were fair game. At least you probably knew what you were getting into.
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I think some US states have laws against marrying your cousin. Depends on where you live I guess.
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it is true that if you share the same dna ( which would happen of you marry a first cousin) and there are genes that carry certain illnesses and abnormalities, they will be more likely to surface..that's why we don't do that now a days bc we figured it out!
Robin Sikes-Mitchner
8 favorites
04/10/2014
Who cares. Our ancestors used to marry 1st cousins.
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Because they often didn't have a choice. My Appalachian ancestors married their cousins...but they literally had no choice in the isolated mountains in 1800. This guy knew better.
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He was from a very poor but talented family....he and his two cousins were famous. ( can't remember who they were)
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Elvis was 24 years-old and in the Army in Germany, when he started dating 14 year-old Priscilla Beaulieu.
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My mother was 18 years old and my father was 26 years old when they met and married a year later. My mother had been on her own since she was 16 years old, my dad since he was 15 years old. Life was different back then. :-S
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@David: 14 is still 1 year older, and...she was not his cousin.
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The fact that she was only 13 AND his cousin was a scandal, even at that time!
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From what I understand Elvis pretty much just took her to raise until Priscilla became of age and then they got married. I don't think there was any sexual activity between them before that.
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nothing against jerry lee lewis as being a pioneer in music..but tell me how on earth does he manage to marry his 13 year ols cousin..amazing..i wonder if anyone could do that s*** today and get away with it..oh well still a rock legend who cares music man
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The government didn't like the idea that "white" people started listening to the sounds of "colored" people, as they were called back then. So they threw some people in jail and drafted others and had white-bread boys singing songs that should have been done by the original groups. This was especially hated in the south.
Lucia Perry
via Facebook
I Noticed The Gas Station In The Back Ground ..... An Esso Station Haven't Seen That In A Many A Year .... How Many Remember The Esso Gas Station .... :)! .. Saw Jerry Lee At The Hollywood. Casino In Bay St. Louis .... Before The Storm Still Sounded Great...
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I always loved the 1989 docudrama "Great Balls of Fire", starring Dennis Quaid as Jerry, and Winona Ryder as Myra. ) It's a bit cartoony and over-acted, but still lots of fun.
Jeanet Groenink 
Mary Jane Perez Cornielle 
Jamie Wagner
2 followers 18 favorites
11/03/2015
yea as one stated if u want to sit there behind a computer and criticize others for the age then u need to think there are some families who marry their children off when they are babies n some of these people never have a voice to use cause if they did they would be punished grow up
Daniel Pinna
204 followers 10.5k+ favorites
05/28/2014
Jerry Lee Lewis did marry his cousin (actually that is her in the photo - Myra Gale Brown). I'm not sure about abuse though... She was very young when they got married.
People tagged in this photo
Jerry Lee Lewis was born to Elmo Kid Lewis, Sr. and Mary "Mamie" Herron Lewis. He had siblings Linda Gail, a musician, Frankie Jean, and Elmo Lewis Jr.
Jerry's cousins were Mickey Gilley, a country music singer, and Jimmy Swaggert, a televangelist, who played piano with him when they were all young boys. Jerry Lee showed such talent without much teaching that his parents took a mortgage out on their farm in order to afford to buy a piano for him to play on.
His mother wanted him to play gospel songs exclusively, but no one took the fire out of Jerry Lee. He played a "boogie-woogie" rendition of the song "My God is Real" at his church school! He was kicked out of it and went on to great success, signing a contract with Sun Records - where Elvis first recorded - in 1956. Working as a solo artist, as well as a session musician, Jerry Lee became a well-known part of the early rock and roll scene. Anyone who was a part of the early fan base of Rock and Roll remembers such classics as "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire".
Jerry Lee's private life, however, derailed his growing career. In May of 1958, while touring Great Britain, it was discovered that he was married to his 13-year-old cousin - she was 13 and he was 22 when they married, although he said that she was 15. His tour of Great Britain was cancelled.
More marriages - seven in total - and other scandals followed amidst a brilliant career: He threatened to kill Elvis Presley, a friend, at the gate of Graceland one evening. He almost shot his own bass player. The IRS seized his property in 1979 for a $274,00 tax debt. He was arrested for tax evasion and found innocent.
Perhaps all of the turmoil was because of his guilt. Raised Pentacostal, he felt that his music and his way of life were sinful. But he persisted in his unique combination of "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" until he became too old. Maybe he was a child of his time?
To quote Jerry Lee Lewis: “’Cause,” he liked to say, “ain’t but one of me.”
Read Jerry Lee's authorized version of his life - from his website - at Jerry Lee Lewis Biography.
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Gary Gray
Gary Eugene Gray was born in northwest Louisiana to parents Ronald Eugene Gray and Melba Dean Tubbs Gray in northwest Louisiana. He has a keen interest in genealogy for the sake of preserving his family history not only for the present day family members, but future generations as well.
You can find him on WikiTree, a free and open community of genealogy enthusiasts and also for all to enjoy free of charge.
Gary is a graduate of the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin and he is also a licensed Certified Public Accountant in the State of Texas.
Gary is married to Paula and they have one son, Connor. Together, they have a happy life.
Gary's interests are his family and volunteering at his son's sporting events, science, history, politics, economics, business, sailing, flying, baroque classical music as well as ancient music, writing, genealogy, roller coasters, jet ski's, and just about anything that is fast and thrilling. During the early 1980's, Gary enjoyed skydiving, having made 217 jumps, with most of those being long duration free-fall.
I found that I am related to several famous people including famous singers, business people as well as state and national politicians. Additionally, I am related to famous people of the past including famous scientists and a famous fighter at the battle of the Alamo. The link to famous people runs through my paternal as well as maternal lines. Very exciting.
I found that I am related to several famous people including famous singers, business people as well as state and national politicians. Additionally, I am related to famous people of the past including famous scientists and a famous fighter at the battle of the Alamo. The link to famous people runs through my paternal as well as maternal lines. Very exciting.
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i have five children 3 girls 2 boys plus i also have stepchildren my grandparents are Robert Wagner and Alice Nadine (Burt) Wagner
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